A lottery is a gambling game in which participants buy chances to win a prize, usually a sum of money. The term is most commonly used to refer to state-sponsored lotteries, but privately organized lotteries exist as well. Lotteries are a form of gambling that has long been popular in Europe and America, where the first modern lotteries emerged.
The oldest known lotteries were held in the 15th century in the Low Countries, where towns used them to raise funds for town fortifications and to help the poor. The first European public lotteries to award prizes in the form of cash were probably venturas, a type of drawing of lots to decide public or private matters, such as marriage, office tenure, or judicial appointments. The word lottery is believed to be derived from the Dutch noun lot, meaning fate or fortune, although some suggest it may be a calque on Middle English loterie, which in turn comes from the French noun lieu.
While there are some who play the lottery as a way to become rich, most people who purchase tickets do so because they hope to experience the thrill of winning. Their purchases can be accounted for by decision models based on expected value maximization, as well as more general utility functions that account for risk-seeking behavior. Nevertheless, they cannot be completely explained by these models, which fail to take into account the fact that the odds of winning the lottery are quite long.